IC Forum Archive

Takashi · Posts: 820

So, it's pretty much obvious the only thing that stirs the pixelated, axed heart of the current IC goer is advances in narrative storytelling. And actually, ever since i saw that Spore gameplay video, this nagging concept has been bouncing in my mind:

"If there is a infinite universe to be played, but that is bound by a linear plotline, then the oposite should be possible : a very small universe space featuring a limitless plotline"

Of course, said is easier than done. Albeit there are limitless tools for procedural universes, the concept itself of procedural-written fiction is somewhat of a unrealized dream. But, at the same time, what we can call game scripting isn't a quest for correct grammar. And not exactly of what we may call creativity, since that's a gigantic pit of maybes.

Let's then, define what I consider a "procedural script" (albet the term itself is wrong):

"A mathematical construct that affects the progress in a game and progresses over time. At any time, previous positions can be recovered. External variables can change the n-dimensional «heading» of the construct. This construct then changes, in real time, one or more elements of the scenario."

Well, maybe it isn't very clear. Here's a schematic:

While t increases, our actions make the script controller change. At the same time, the NPC (the actor) reacts, according to that the script belives to be a "good" plot.

But I'm an engineer by heart and profession. So, I'd rather see things as a project. A project I called "Farmer's Daughter" mostly because it's based on the simplest of settings:

"There's a farm. An OLD FARMER and his DAUGHTER live there. PLAYER arrives."

The point here, obviously, is in the interaction of the Player with the Farmer and the Daughter. The possibilities/plotlines are various and pretty much covered in all sort of movies, books, jokes, and scary stories. I don't care what it may do, and how cool it may be, as long as what it's getting and interpreting end up feeling "right" to the player. The goal of this discussion is to determine what are the minimal elements one requires to build such a self-writing "advanced narrative" script.

Let's assume the interface isn't defined, but favour classical methods. My models so far were built around a gamepad with 2 context-sensitive buttons, but for this discussion everything from virtual reality helmets to a keyboard are accepted - just remember that a more complex mechanism means a larger range of behaviours on the NPC's, and that means you have to consider more variations.

What I'm interested in hearing about is:

* How would you suggest the non-player action should be controlled? (Should 2 advanced AI programs control the NPC characters? Should a single "Ghostwriter" AI run and control all behaviour?)
* Should it learn from a previous playtru?(The "writer/actor" algorithm improves his performace everytime you play? Should it be a definitive equation from the start?)
* What variables are important to be gathered?(how does one measure the interest of the characters in relation to the player? What variables can be taken, and when?)

This now seems more flaky than when I first devised this post, but I think it still has some solid ideas going on, so... Have at it.

the vinculum gate · Posts: 2868

best guardian final parody thread ever

LegatoB · Posts: 1546

the vinculum gate wrote:

best guardian final parody thread ever

I wouldn't say that; I can't interpret any of that as an obvious reference to BLEACH.

winkerwanker · Posts: 2414

Aren't games set on farms a MORIBUND GENRE though?

Baron Patsy · Posts: 573

I'm only saying this because I'm not smart enough to have anything worthwhile to contribute, but whoever made that graph needs to learn how to spell "comedy" and "obsessed".

Drem · Posts: 429

I'm not thinking too deeply here, but you could create a game based around various "scenes". The game has stored this giant library of scenes that it uses as you play. Depending on the choices you make in the first scene (or it could be randomized, so there are many possible first scenes), the game will progress you to a different scene. It's not like a path that branches, but rather any scene could be chosen depending on certain variables. So even if you do some things different on your second playthrough, you could possibly see later on the same scene that you saw in your first play through. Small things could be changed in scenes depending on things that happened earlier. Perhaps there is this one scene where the Father is complaining about how the player is a hassle. If you had broken some plates in an earlier scene, he would go "I was really mad that time you broke those plates." However, if you had never gotten that scene, he would say something based on a different scene you gone through, and instead say "I was really mad that time you eloped with my daughter." Of course, you could always not have done things to elicit his anger, and so the game might never give you this scene.

I suppose that's a rather simple idea, and similar to things we see today. But the idea of Infinite Crises in Infinite Playthroughs is intriguing.

dark steve · Posts: 3002

Baron Patsy wrote:

I'm only saying this because I'm not smart enough to have anything worthwhile to contribute, but whoever made that graph needs to learn how to spell "comedy" and "obsessed".

Takashi é portuguese, cut him some slack.

I'm formulating a response. Really!

Menander · Posts: 34

Disclaimer: It's possible I'm completely misinterpreting this!

The simplest way I can see how this could be done is with an vaugly Sims like opinion the Farmer and Daughter would hold of the main character (this would also be in additon to the daily routines of the two main characters, which without player interference would continue indefinetly without changing). Say, for instance, you as the player decide that you want to court the Farmer's Daughter. The Farmer however, is very protective of his offspring. The longer the time you spend within a certain proximity of the Daughter would make the Father progessively more suspicious of your intentions. This would make the variable opinion that the Father has in reguards to the main character drop. Depending on the level of the Father's opinion, he would act differently around the player, glaring at him when he enters the room, being stubborn and unhelpful if asked for something, or even begin to spy on you because he suspects you're after his daughter.

Likewise, the daughter would have her own variable opinion of you. If you simply spent time near her, (the variable that makes father's opinion of you drop) she wouldn't care for you much either. You'd be a creepy stalker, basically. But, if while spending time with her, you talked pleasently with her (some kind of organic multi brancing dialouge tree sort of thing) or helped he with her chores and so on, she would think better of you, and her variable approval rating would climb.

That's all pretty simple. But more variables would come from the fact that the Farmer and Daughter have their own approval ratings of each other, and how much each of them likes or dislikes you can indirectly affect those variables. If say, you help the father with some work, or maybe save his life when a bale of hay falls on him, he would start to like you more, even thought you're possibly trying to get into his daughter's pants. And if after that, you say or do something rude enough around the daughter that isn't taken as playful flirting (or she doesn't think well enough of you yet to even consider flirting) there's a possiblity she might talk about it to the farmer. This could cause the farmer's approval rating of you to either drop, or because you saved his life earlier, cause the his approval rating of his daughter to drop (though hearing what his daughter had to say, his approval rating of you would probably drop a little reguardless).

I said this already, but the dynamic ways characters would act around you in reguards to the approval rating I find pretty interesting. Since there would hopefully be some top notch animation at work, tiny details like avoiding eye contact, activly seeking to spend time with you or away from you, twirling of hair throught the fingers, it could be a very engaging experience.

In this scenario, I guess you'd be trying to earn full approval from both the daughter and the farmer. Or alternetly, trying to get them to hate each other, or even just trying to bang the daughter. I guess you could do anyhting you wanted to, which is the whole point, right?

Mr. Mechanical · Posts: 1890

I think a single ghostwriter AI controlling both NPCs would be simpler to program, rather than two complex AI. What you need are verbs though, actions that can be done in different contexts that the AI could use as variables for judging what to do from one situation to the next.

I suppose having it learn from each previous play through would be intriquing, but it also sounds like a good way for a player to paint himself into a corner. Supposing you treat one character so badly over the course of several play throughs that they eventually don't talk to you anymore no matter what.

I think the first thing to do would be to create a set of verbs that the player can utilize to interact with the AI. That way it would have a controlled set of variables to play with initially. Also throw a psychological element into the mix to add context. Let me try to frame this line of thinking with a possible gameplay example for reference.

Let's assume this is on PS2 and the X button is the main action button. You walk up to something or someone and press X because you're curious about it and want to see how it would respond. Therefore, the game recognizes the X button as one that denotes curiosity and thus tries to guess the player's motivations from there. Other buttons can equal other emotive responses, such as anger, fear, or sympathy.

You start out on the outskirts of a farm. The Farmer is tilling his field. Between you and him you notice a cow grazing so you walk up to it and press X. The cow, of course, goes moo. The Farmer notices a stranger person messing with his cow so he calls out to you. You walk over and interact with him through the Fear button, showing that you are scared of him and don't want to piss him off. His reaction would be entirely different were you to press the Anger button and try to start a fight with him.

Okay, so far you have Curiousity, Anger, Fear, and Sympathy that you can emote to either the Farmer or Daughter. Their reactions to you and to each other depend entirely on the context of the situation they find themselves in. I'm not a programmer so it's hard to conceptualize all this on a purely engineering level but I think you'd need a set of defined verbs (or actions the player can use to interact with the surrounding gameworld and it's inhabitants), and an AI robust enough to recognize what each action means in the context it is used in. You measure the interest of the characters in relation to the player by their response to the player's actions.

Hmm, this is starting to sound like that Facade game that everyone was talking about a while ago. Or maybe not, I never played it. This is interesting either way.

winkerwanker · Posts: 2414

i'm really confused now

is this a parody thread anymore? or is everyone pretending to take this seriously to make Guardian cry?

Mr. Mechanical · Posts: 1890

winker go away and shit up the axe if you don't want to take this thread seriously.

Baron Patsy · Posts: 573

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

I think a single ghostwriter AI controlling both NPCs would be simpler to program, rather than two complex AI. What you need are verbs though, actions that can be done in different contexts that the AI could use as variables for judging what to do from one situation to the next.

I suppose having it learn from each previous play through would be intriquing, but it also sounds like a good way for a player to paint himself into a corner. Supposing you treat one character so badly over the course of several play throughs that they eventually don't talk to you anymore no matter what.

I think the first thing to do would be to create a set of verbs that the player can utilize to interact with the AI. That way it would have a controlled set of variables to play with initially. Also throw a psychological element into the mix to add context. Let me try to frame this line of thinking with a possible gameplay example for reference.

Let's assume this is on PS2 and the X button is the main action button. You walk up to something or someone and press X because you're curious about it and want to see how it would respond. Therefore, the game recognizes the X button as one that denotes curiosity and thus tries to guess the player's motivations from there. Other buttons can equal other emotive responses, such as anger, fear, or sympathy.

You start out on the outskirts of a farm. The Farmer is tilling his field. Between you and him you notice a cow grazing so you walk up to it and press X. The cow, of course, goes moo. The Farmer notices a stranger person messing with his cow so he calls out to you. You walk over and interact with him through the Fear button, showing that you are scared of him and don't want to piss him off. His reaction would be entirely different were you to press the Anger button and try to start a fight with him.

Okay, so far you have Curiousity, Anger, Fear, and Sympathy that you can emote to either the Farmer or Daughter. Their reactions to you and to each other depend entirely on the context of the situation they find themselves in. I'm not a programmer so it's hard to conceptualize all this on a purely engineering level but I think you'd need a set of defined verbs (or actions the player can use to interact with the surrounding gameworld and it's inhabitants), and an AI robust enough to recognize what each action means in the context it is used in. You measure the interest of the characters in relation to the player by their response to the player's actions.

Hmm, this is starting to sound like that Facade game that everyone was talking about a while ago. Or maybe not, I never played it. This is interesting either way.

I like what Mr. Mechanical suggests, here.

What I'm wondering about, though, is how the two AI's would interact with one another, independent of the player and the player's input. How would that be handled? Maybe each AI would have their own "personality", so to speak, which would be molded according to the actions of the other AI and the player, and they would act according to this personality and it's parameters?

For example, if you were to interact more positively with the daughter, and negatively with the farmer, would that affect the farmer's relationship with the daughter? And if so, how? Would the farmer act coldly towards his daughter, or would he be friendlier than usual, attempting to coax her away from the player?

I don't think I really know what I'm talking about, and that probably sounded really stupid. This is kind of the first time I've actually tried to contribute anything to a serious thread.

GrimSweeper · Posts: 530

Interesting ideas so far, but I'm getting the feeling it is player-centred. That's all fine and dandy (probably the easiest to pull off too!), but a greater vibrancy would come out of interactions that are NOT set off by the player.

We're talking about a single scenario that we, as the player, comes into at the same moment, right? And each iteration of this scenario is unique in some way, aye? So the preparation for every beginning would be important. There would be a set of variables devoted to randomly messing around with initial variables, such as like/dislike of the Farmer, daughter, stranger (that's you), maybe even the farm animals; setting, if it is raining, sunny, cloudy, windy, etc; small situations that are set with some progress (daughter lost a favoured trinket somewhere in the home, farmer has a recently dead relative, etc etc); possibly even the amount of information each 'actor' has. The big problem is getting the program to chunk out these initial variables that are unique enough to give the player the sense of newness. It cannot be seemingly old by the third or fourth runthrough.

So! The setup of intial variables. Next up is actor's actions influencing these variables. I say actors because it should not be only the player that makes things go; that would be the same thing as the ubiquitous hentai "Choose your sex pictures" games. An example would be while you're talking with the farmer, the daughter may leave the cottage to go shopping in town. She's gone for a time and you will not be able to talk to her for that duration. You may enter her room without a problem (as long as the farmer doesn't notice you entering his home with her gone).

The only way I can describe this action stuff is through nodes; at each node along a timeline of sorts there is a possibility of an interaction outside the player's influence. These nodes are the places where things can 'interrupt' what the player is doing, so it strings along the developing "plot" seamlessly. A strong wind picks up suddenly while you're walking along, or a pig walks up to you and humps your leg whilst you are talking to the farmer. The nodes then influence the next few actions, fuzzy logic like, by putting more strength in related interactions. Like for the wind picking up, the farmer is more likely to comment on the possibility of rain, or he smirks as he looks down at the pig when it starts humping. Depending on his initial variables (which can change according to what's happening in the scenario) he may even take sympathy and kick at his pig to make it stop.

I'll stop. I'm confusing myself.

Hot Stott Bot · Posts: 2097

Somebody wrote:

Facade

I think Facade is very interesting in that it would actually be a feasible way to do things in a videogame. It doesn't let you direct the narrative in some infinitely complex path in the grand scheme of things, which makes it actually possible to deal with.

What Facade does is very clever. It lets you think you are experiencing some narrative you've created yourself, though it is subtly guiding you to just one of three possible endings.

It isn't perfect, though I like it. It's basically a nice mechanic for funneling a bunch of arbitrary player input into a small number of possible outcomes.

I had a thought back when Facade came out that you could run a Facade-like engine in the background of a long game (like a JRPG) to take the place of those little "WILL YOU SAVE ALICE? YES/NO" segments that JRPGs usually have.

ANYWAYS!

LegatoB · Posts: 1546

Oh, we're replying to this thread seriously now? Why didn't I recieve the memo? Maybe I should fire my secretary.

Anyway, like a good Guardian FINAL thread, the OP has some potentitally interesting ideas that from a programming perspective are just a pain in the ass to implement, at best, and the effects desired could probably be achieved using a more "fake" method. Even the simple "hanging out on a farm with the farmer and his daughter" scenario could easily spiral out of control into an overambitious mess of a "game." If you're going to go with the "influencing the story by player actions" thing, you definitely shouldn't do it like this (or like how Guardian wants it to be done); at least not initially. I still prefer the Way of the Samurai model; a simple setting with key events which influence the way the story goes, and it encourages you to learn what you need to do on each attempt through the story to find all the solutions.

Setting aside personal preferences and the logtistical nightmare of programming something like this, it'd be entirely too easy for the math controlling this shit to get entirely out of whack. And at this point, no matter how much you try to make things behave realistically, and reacting to the player's actions, odds are you'd still get shit like what happens in Oblivion - NPCs doing just plain weird shit or getting into arbitrary gang wars because the player managed to get them into the line of fire during a battle. I just can't see this sort of thing really working as anything more than an interesting failed experiment.

internisus · Posts: 961

Winker and Vinculum, as usual, you are dragging the entire forum down whenever someone attempts a serious discussion. If you feel the need to make empty, supposedly comedic remarks, please create a shadow thread in the Axe for that purpose and disappear altogether.

Drem wrote:

I'm not thinking too deeply here, but you could create a game based around various "scenes". The game has stored this giant library of scenes that it uses as you play. Depending on the choices you make in the first scene (or it could be randomized, so there are many possible first scenes), the game will progress you to a different scene. It's not like a path that branches, but rather any scene could be chosen depending on certain variables. So even if you do some things different on your second playthrough, you could possibly see later on the same scene that you saw in your first play through. Small things could be changed in scenes depending on things that happened earlier. Perhaps there is this one scene where the Father is complaining about how the player is a hassle. If you had broken some plates in an earlier scene, he would go "I was really mad that time you broke those plates." However, if you had never gotten that scene, he would say something based on a different scene you gone through, and instead say "I was really mad that time you eloped with my daughter." Of course, you could always not have done things to elicit his anger, and so the game might never give you this scene.

That doesn't strike me as any different from a complex, manually set tree of possible scenes and dialogue details determined by variable tracking that player action triggers throughout the game. I don't fully understand the opening post, but I think what you're describing is the complete opposite of the kind of system being proposed.

On the contrary, Takashi seems to be speaking somewhat technically about a narrative equivalent to randomly generated dungeons. As he mentions, the main problem is that such dungeons don't need to have any reason to their form (as opposed to clever designer levels, which is why I dislike random dungeon crawler games), whereas plot events must adhere to things like grammar and logic. Most importantly, you want your narrative to be meaningful, and it seems to me that, with artificial intelligence being what it is, there is no way to make that happen procedurally. Like I said, though, I don't fully understand the OP.

This reminds me a great deal of that short speculation regarding the future of Morrowind-like games, in which, we would hope, the player's actions freely trigger world reactions in a logical social manner. I'm very skeptical about all this, however attractive it sounds, which is why I'm currently working on a complex tree-type narrative semi-freedom coincidentally employing a general input scheme similar to Mr. Mechanical's verb emotes.

Now, Menander is describing a way to intertwine branching pre-written trees and a procedural NPC opinion system, which seems plausible, but I have a problem with the simplicity of Sims-like "approval rating" representation. It just strikes me as phony.

Menander wrote:

In this scenario, I guess you'd be trying to earn full approval from both the daughter and the farmer. Or alternetly, trying to get them to hate each other, or even just trying to bang the daughter. I guess you could do anyhting you wanted to, which is the whole point, right?

Therein lies an important problem. Your solution does seem to offer some interesting situations for procedural NPC expression, and I fully support the kind of animation detail you're suggesting, but, as that last sentence indicates, we still won't wind up with significant (read: dramatic) narrative, will we? The farmer's daughter scenario is a very simplistic one lacking any explicit dramatic background, so we don't have any dramatic requirements, but that also means we won't come across any dramatic narrative. If you impose this kind of system upon the narrative framework of a modern videogame with lives at stake and political implications to worry about, can you create narrative freedom? I think that all you would manage to do is to give the player the opportunity to save the world while either gaining or losing the approval of the public. In other words, this is useful only for a dating simulation -- a simulation of narrative that lacks any game.

Edit: So my point is that "procedurally generated narrative freedom" cannot stand alone if it is to have any dramatic significance. Right?

LegatoB · Posts: 1546

internisus wrote:

Winker, Vinculum, and LegatoB, as usual, you are all dragging the entire forum down whenever someone attempts a serious discussion. If you feel the need to make empty, supposedly comedic remarks, please create a shadow thread in the Axe for that purpose and disappear altogether.

Hey, I'll drag down any thread I want! If there's one thing you should have figured out about these forums, it's that even the most serious discuessions take silly digressions frequently and can recover (albeit sometimes with an entire different subject). If you don't like my sense of humor, just ignore me.

winkerwanker · Posts: 2414

I'd say LegatoB made a rather serious point.

The one about it being impractical and unneccesary i mean.

Hot Stott Bot · Posts: 2097

LegatoB wrote:

Impossible to program. :-(

That's what I liked about Facade. It actually seemed like the beginnings of something very feasible for an actual videogame, both in terms of programming time and art/story/content creation!

Someone wrote:

dramatic significance

That's the other thing I liked about Facade! Since it always tended towards some limited set of endings, you could still have dramatic significance while making the narrative seem random. Like a poor guy swimming in a river with a lot of current... his path is his own, but he's still going down that waterfall at the end.

LegatoB · Posts: 1546

I never tried Facade. As I recall, it wanted to install to my almost-totally-full C drive, despite E having a few dozen gigabytes free, and simply wouldn't change its mind. If your installer is going to suck so utterly, I lose interest pretty rapidly. I've seen footage of it in action, though, and it doesn't quite seem to work. Too often it's impossible to tell if the NPCs are reacting to the player's text, and if they are reacting, what their reaction is. Maybe I'll redownload it and give it a shot later this week.

Hot Stott Bot · Posts: 2097

LegatoB wrote:

I never tried Facade. As I recall, it wanted to install to my almost-totally-full C drive, despite E having a few dozen gigabytes free, and simply wouldn't change its mind. If your installer is going to suck so utterly, I lose interest pretty rapidly. I've seen footage of it in action, though, and it doesn't quite seem to work. Too often it's impossible to tell if the NPCs are reacting to the player's text, and if they are reacting, what their reaction is. Maybe I'll redownload it and give it a shot later this week.

Oh, it has its share of problems! It wasn't really a videogame after all, it was an academic research project. Academics don't really try very hard to make things "user friendly" and "polished" after all. It also doesn't do lots of little things that videogames do well, such as taking into account the fact that players will naturally do the stupidest thing they can do.

Edit: Does this mean that anti-anti-intellectualism is going to become the hip new thing to be at insert credit?

Another Edit: I agree with winker, because he's the best poster ever.

Scratchmonkey · Posts: 2229

There are definitely elements of Facade there and there are definitely problems with Facade. The primary one for me was that aside from moving around the apartment, your interaction with the other characters is done through "talking" to them by typing out English. The actors then parse the words and try and connect them as a semantic phrase as well as checking them against a list of interal topics as well as how often phrases/words have been used in the current playthrough.

This is a pretty fascinating and logistically impressive way to do things; however, it's still pretty wonky (as we're still nowhere near true Natural Language Processing) and it also makes playing the game hard-to-impossible for people who don't speak English.

Which gets back to Mr. Mech's suggestion of verbs, which seems to be a central part of this kind of scenario. If the scenario is going to change as a result of the actions of the user, the game needs a way to interpret these actions. Using placement, movement and facing is going to severely limit the variety of these interpretations or else make the game so abstract that it would become unplayable.

To my mind, the most important thing in this scenario (and for the industry in general) is to devise some kind of interface that the user can use to have emotional communication with NPCs (forgetting for now conceptual communication). I'm envisioning something like a color palette that you might have in Photoshop, where the player can select an emotion and then assign a degree to it, very angry vs. slightly sad vs. indifferent, etc.

As for the AI, I like the independent, model-based AI. Yes, it will lead to situations like what we see in Oblivion. However, I think that this is the only way that we're going to get anything remotely sophisticated.

Jeff Garneau · Posts: 1622

hmmm. I have been thinking about things along these lines independently ever since i read guardian's last thread.

i will contribute meaningfully tomorrow, hopefully.

Scratchmonkey · Posts: 2229

The ultimate interface would be a VR helmet with sensors that could register your facial expressions and a nice speech-verification suite that would output some sort of semantics that the AI could parse.

The first one would actually be possible to build today, although it would be impractical from a cost perspective. The second one is a long ways away.

brainiac · Posts: 941

Scratchmonkey wrote:

some kind of interface that the user can use to have emotional communication with NPCs (forgetting for now conceptual communication).

Scratchmonkey wrote:

The ultimate interface would be a VR helmet with sensors that could register your facial expressions and a nice speech-verification suite that would output some sort of semantics that the AI could parse.

The first one would actually be possible to build today, although it would be impractical from a cost perspective. The second one is a long ways away.

how about an e-meter. by e-meter, i mean a polygraph lie detector type thing. which would prolly be cheaper and retain a bit of mystery for the player, as emotional signals tend to be a bit more complicated (difficult to control?) than "smile = happy, frown = sad."

Mister Toups · Posts: 4943

whoa!

I'll have to respond to this later!

dark steve · Posts: 3002

Classic.

km · Posts: 171

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

...
I think the first thing to do would be to create a set of verbs that the player can utilize to interact with the AI. That way it would have a controlled set of variables to play with initially. Also throw a psychological element into the mix to add context. Let me try to frame this line of thinking with a possible gameplay example for reference.

To me, that sounds like Zork, with some more or less random variables thrown in. Except more restrictive, as you seem to be limited to verbs relating to feeling.

While it might be an interesting expierment to see what sort of game you end up with when you disallow most standard physical actions for the player, it also sounds frustrating and boring.

The problem with creating a dynamic game like this is, I think, one of natural language. In order to truly express things in a nuanced fashion, which would be necessary to make the game actually playable in my opinion, requires the creation or adoptation of a certain set of rules that exist between the player and the game. Except, the game needs to be able to slowly modify these rules to reflect the word the player is creating.

Basically, you'd be creating a dynamic language between the player and the game. I can't see any other way to accurately gauge the player's actions. I've played games in the past and come to an impasse because the options available to me to continue are supposed to adhere to some sort of path, say good or evil, but I can't choose, because there's no mechanism for the game to make me understand, or for me to make the game understand what I want to do. I suppose it's a limitation of the media, but if we seek to surpass that, the only way I see is to give some meaning and context, even if artificial, to the player-game relationship.

Until that problem is taken care of, I don't really see any point in worrying about things like what sort of AI is controlling what, because without an elegant method for expression, there will be severe limits on the possible interaction between the AI and the player.

Basically, without a form of natural expression, there cannot be a "limitless plotline." This is perhaps one reason why games have infinite space but limited plotlines - there is no true mechanism for a suitably dynamic storyline, and so there is compensation in the form of enhanced freedom outside the story, which doesn't suffer from the same pitfalls.

professor_scissors · Posts: 1033

I think it would be better if you could just press the circle button and it would show a 5 minute cinematic of how the player tricks the narrative.

FortNinety · Posts: 4591

dark steve wrote:

Classic.

the vinculum gate · Posts: 2868

hahahaha

please flame me more for not replying "seriously" to a fucking PARODY THREAD

edit: why the new screenname guardian
metaedit: guardian you are looking as metro as always, what are you drinking there

Takashi · Posts: 820

the vinculum gate wrote:

please flame me more for not replying "seriously" to a fucking PARODY THREAD

If i wanted it to be a parody, I'd be sure to be less obvious, and added stuff like "hung like a rynocerous" and "intelectual capacity of a sack of wallnuts". I'd be sure to add some nuns handling joysticks as well, for good measure.

I'll reply to the rest later.

Scratchmonkey · Posts: 2229

the vinculum gate wrote:

digging my hole even deeper

Classic.

dark steve · Posts: 3002

FortNinety wrote:

dark steve wrote:

Classic.

Man, don't be removing my key kontextual kues.

Decinoge · Posts: 129

\o...

.........

sorry i have nothing to say... probably cause i'm not smart enought or i dont have this kind of inteligence... or... whatever... well... at least to formulate an opinion. but i'm kinda understanding everything... so... Oo...

this is realy a lame reply... making a reply just to say "keep it goin guys, there are people reading and learning from this (me)"

\o

the vinculum gate · Posts: 2868

Decinoge wrote:

\o...

.........

sorry i have nothing to say... probably cause i'm not smart enought or i dont have this kind of inteligence... or... whatever... well... at least to formulate an opinion. but i'm kinda understanding everything... so... Oo...

this is realy a lame reply... making a reply just to say "keep it goin guys, there are people reading and learning from this (me)"

\o

this is a thread about people lording their vocabulary and ability to write endlessly about dumb shit over other people so don't feel bad

Ethoscapade · Posts: 627

the vinculum gate wrote:

Decinoge wrote:

\o...

.........

sorry i have nothing to say... probably cause i'm not smart enought or i dont have this kind of inteligence... or... whatever... well... at least to formulate an opinion. but i'm kinda understanding everything... so... Oo...

this is realy a lame reply... making a reply just to say "keep it goin guys, there are people reading and learning from this (me)"

\o

this is a thread about people lording their vocabulary and ability to write endlessly about dumb shit over other people so don't feel bad

no offense but the indirect object of your verb isn't too clear there (too many words between "lording" and "over other people")

Scratchmonkey · Posts: 2229

It's also a thread for fighting against your insecurities in public, so it's got that going for it too.

sup trolls

dark steve · Posts: 3002

You know, what would re-track this thread pretty quick is flowcharts.

Takashi · Posts: 820

LegatoB wrote:

Even the simple "hanging out on a farm with the farmer and his daughter" scenario could easily spiral out of control into an overambitious mess of a "game."

So, we don't make it ambitious. The simplification comes that we take from the place in terms of the universe, and give it back in terms of freedom to mess around.

LegatoB wrote:

IfI still prefer the Way of the Samurai model; a simple setting with key events which influence the way the story goes, and it encourages you to learn what you need to do on each attempt through the story to find all the solutions.

What I was thinking is that those "key events" weren't pre-scripted, in this sense. Make them happen anywhere when a given condition is met. Blurring the barriers about what triggers diferent stories rises the mistery about them, and makes people seek other ways to mess around with the script. It will never evolve into something as complex as the multiple plotlines in WotS, but it will provide more freedon to the NPC characters.

Is it useless? Provably. But it will feel diferent.

dark steve wrote:

Takashi é portuguese, cut him some slack.

That's no excuse for poor english. I have 6 years of english like everyone else. Being 3am when I did that, however, seems to me like a better escapegoat.

Menander wrote:

In this scenario, I guess you'd be trying to earn full approval from both the daughter and the farmer. Or alternetly, trying to get them to hate each other, or even just trying to bang the daughter. I guess you could do anyhting you wanted to, which is the whole point, right?

I can also just want to go and kill everyone, or not ever come into contact with the NPC characters. The Sims comparison is pretty much close, but Sims themselves aren't built with a purpose. My method is that a higher "ghostwriter" would say "father is mad, so he chases you, but daughter gets sad" thing. Provide a purpose to the set.

Mr. Mechanical wrote:

Okay, so far you have Curiousity, Anger, Fear, and Sympathy that you can emote to either the Farmer or Daughter. Their reactions to you and to each other depend entirely on the context of the situation they find themselves in. I'm not a enough to recognize what each action means in the context it is used in. You measure the interest of the characters in relation to the player by their response to the player's actions.programmer so it's hard to conceptualize all this on a purely engineering level but I think you'd need a set of defined verbs (or actions the player can use to interact with the surrounding gameworld and it's inhabitants), and an AI robust.

I can see how it should work. My context sensitive buttons were set to, let's say "X" made a "positive" action and "O" made a "negative" action. Again, adding barriers to simplify the amount of variables the AI had to take into account. You made me thought this just may not be enough.

..Aw crap. I'm too drunk and beat to continue.

Jeff Garneau · Posts: 1622

takahashi your english is very very close to perfect. i think that most people had no idea you are foreign.

i think that a flowchart detailing possible narrative flows would be more what dark steve is looking for though. i'm looking for it as well.

internisus · Posts: 961

I'm not trying to be a dick here, but this really is basically a dating sim sort of thing, right?

Rud13 · Posts: 3277

I was intrigued by the fact that Takashi also supposed it to be a horror game.

dark steve · Posts: 3002

Inty wrote:

I'm not trying to be a dick here, but this really is basically a dating sim sort of thing, right?

No, you're missing it.

Jeff Garneau wrote:

i think that a flowchart detailing possible narrative flows would be more what dark steve is looking for though. i'm looking for it as well.

Yeah, I'm sort of tinkering around with one right now, although not so much narrative flows as how the AI routines governing them would work, in a broad way. What kind of happened up there is we got bogged down in setting the parameters of the game and fighting spambots, rather than what I think the (much more interesting) thrust of the topic is. Not so much imagining a game we want to play, but dreaming up a theoretical framework for how a procedurally generated narrative would look under the hood.

GrimSweeper · Posts: 530

Attempt #2! Wherein this poster goes on a rambling comparison...

...with Rogue-likes.

I keep thinking of this topic is trying to work towards is what the rogue-like genre does primitively; give pseudo-random EVENTS that can come in any order and the effects can greatly vary. From these EVENTS, you can build up a framework of suitable responses that work towards the maximum amount of success.

For example, Angband. In the first levels, there isn't a huge difficulty in defeating the normal enemies. You don't really have to think much about what you're doing; you just do it (there are exceptions; magic-wielders have a tougher time at it). However, a few levels down you encounter Smeagol. He's invisible, moves erratically, and can teleport when in touch-range of you. First response is, "Can I see him?" If you can't see him, there's a greater degree of difficulty in battling him. Second response is, "Can I take him down at range?" Smeagol cannot get away very rapidly unless he can touch you, so shooting him with things-that-hurt is the best strategy. There are other responses, but the first two pretty much define what the player is going to do. In the same way, this game idea seems to want to make the player draw a framework; a strategy that will bring them closer to their defined goal. With a 'limitless' plot, it seems it will be player-defined.

The EVENTS aren't strung together in any old fashion; there may be trends in certain areas but they won't always be there. They MIGHT happen and so they are worth keeping in mind and possibly having a backup plan if they DO occur. In Angband, being poisoned can happen at the very start. Once poisoned, the player's health drops by 1 each move until it is flushed from their system, which takes a random number of moves. Purchasing a potion of Neutralize Poison might be worth considering, or working towards memorizing the spell Cure Poison as soon as possible. Progressing in a certain manner each time in this outlined scenario of farmer and daughter might lead to the same interactions every time, but there might be an EVENT totally out of your control that throws the whole framework off-kilter.

Hmm, looking back it seems this whole paragraph is a little pointless from the "How will this work?" question being worked on. Since I'm losing track I'll stop here, but I'm sure there are more parallels to draw from rogue-likes.

A Rag Man · Posts: 22

My main unresolved question for you, Takashi, is whether the character can move around and interact with objects in a game world (as in most games: Final Fantasy, Mario, etc.) or if the idea is to present, basically, an interactive slideshow (ala Myst, many dating sims) with some really interesting programming running beneath. I'm not asking because I'd be critical of either version, but because, at some point, that's going to affect the discussion.

Jeff Garneau wrote:

i think that a flowchart detailing possible narrative flows would be more what dark steve is looking for though. i'm looking for it as well.

I think that the point is that there is no flowchart of events. The game's programming would produce events procedurally (improvised from a basic kernel of programming). In this case, the basic kernel would be one of the genres/atmospheres listed under "Script" in Takashi's original post. The game would begin (randomly?--I'm actually asking) with one of the Scripts, and the effects designated to that Script would filter down to the Farmer and Daughter characters. If it's a comedy, they'd act comedically, but not by working from rote plot trees or by triggering set-in-stone events. Instead, the Player is limited by the prevailing logic of the streaming situation. The Script dictates how the Player can react and, therefore, what types of variables He can produce: If the Farmer makes a joke about his weight you're left with some kind of choice between a positive or a negative, which wouldn't be availlable if, say, it started as horror and the Farmer had asked you to murder his Daughter. (Incidentally, in the real world this is called "mutual determinism")

The game's plot would then progress by how the Player deals with the options given to him. Maybe if the Player is incredibly negative (boosting the Negative Intensity) at every given opportunity during the Comedy Script the Actor (again, see the original graphs) will begin to feel Fear. That fear filters into the Ghostwriter AI, making it shift towards the Horror script, which makes the AIs act more...horrifying, which forces the Player to react in a limited fashion, which perpetuates the game, which is what we, as gamers, tend to call Fun.

Q:Why is this somewhat convoluted system a better means to an end than just have a plot tree system? A:It's subtler and more replayable. With every plot-treed game, you're going to begin with and then later encounter at least some overlap. The procedural nature of this game concept allows for a seamlessly flowing game that will almost always be different, not just because you change, but because the game changes how you change.

At least, that's how I'm reading this whole thing. (Correct me if I'm wrong, Takashi.) Also: you want it to have a meanigful ending, right? So, do you mean a single meaningful ending, like a frayed rope, coming together to a final point? Or do you mean multiple endings that organically develop, which the player brings meaning to?

This is probably the most interesting topic on this forum, right now. I'm glad it's surviving on the backs of people who care about interesting ideas!

Decinoge · Posts: 129

i was gonna make a reply, but in the midle of the text i realized that was something more like NPC personality, and thats beyond the point that is beeing discussed here... we are talking of how the characters react (NPC)
making a history and characters grow up.

butt tthe things that u will always have a basic pre-made plot line... something that is the objectivve of the game, or at least an object that is given to u, the interact of the other chars. however this last case will be a pre-defined event, and not exactly... again... the theme in discussion. if those events do not exist... the thing will basicly evolve to a probably more advanced... sims... like some sayd.

the basic plot line is always nessessary, so will probably probably kill the... theme in discussion... but i'm mostt certaintly wrong Oo... wich is great...

but one thing that it makes me thing... even with a so slight plott line... isn't it possible to express any kind of morality. its not hard to make a "riding red hood" kinda plot... and u know what u've always heard about those storys: "whats the story moral?"... whats behind all that? thats a cute question... but i'm again... getting... away... from the subject -_-

oke... again i've done it... whatever... i'll post it anyway

Takashi · Posts: 820

A Rag Man wrote:

I think that the point is that there is no flowchart of events.

Well, is there is no possible flowchart, then it can't be programmed.

I used the idea of a random start of the script, here. You can see a original simple interaction, and a more complex interaction. This depends on what stage the Script AI is set. Second interaction is inspired by MIT's MAKEBELIVE. It's still not very good at explaining the concept globally, but this takes a bit of time to design.

A Rag Man wrote:

My main unresolved question for you, Takashi, is whether the character can move around and interact with objects in a game world (as in most games: Final Fantasy, Mario, etc.) or if the idea is to present, basically, an interactive slideshow (ala Myst, many dating sims) with some really interesting programming running beneath

The problem with interactive screenshows, is that they require a higher level of polish - either of text or of script, to be interesting. By having a open game world, then the plot is significant in the way it affects characters more than in how it is presented to us.

GrimSweeper wrote:

Wherein this poster goes on a rambling comparison...

...with Rogue-likes.

And that's a very good point, since rougelikes are actually the original procedurally-created universes. Well, that and Elite. Both games share this same idea, except those are created as features of the universe, and here I'm thinking of aplying them to an all encompassing plot.

Decinoge wrote:

but one thing that it makes me thing... even with a so slight plott line... isn't it possible to express any kind of morality. its not hard to make a "riding red hood" kinda plot... and u know what u've always heard about those storys: "whats the story moral?"... whats behind all that? thats a cute question... but i'm again... getting... away... from the subject -_- .

Albeit I didn't want to thread on morality, nothing says we can't add to the Script concepts of morality. Meeham's TALE-SPIN tries to writes Aesop-inspired stories, for example. It's, however, unfair to compare any computer written script to a human, for obvious reasons.

GrimSweeper wrote:

Also: you want it to have a meanigful ending, right? So, do you mean a single meaningful ending, like a frayed rope, coming together to a final point? Or do you mean multiple endings that organically develop, which the player brings meaning to?

I think that's really up to the implementation. My idea was to give a given time when you're locked in the universe, and then provide an exit. An artificial event can also be added that forces the universe to a conclusion. The script may decide when the story ends, as well - normally when it sees a conclusion.

professor_scissors wrote:

I think it would be better if you could just press the circle button and it would show a 5 minute cinematic of how the player tricks the narrative.

The whole concept is to exploit tricking the narrative, sequence branking and so.

km wrote:

Basically, without a form of natural expression, there cannot be a "limitless plotline." This is perhaps one reason why games have infinite space but limited plotlines - there is no true mechanism for a suitably dynamic storyline, and so there is compensation in the form of enhanced freedom outside the story, which doesn't suffer from the same pitfalls.

That's correct! My belief, however, is that in the same way we can generate a large number of random dungeons (and yet not a infinite one), we can also generate a large number of incidental plotlines.

internisus · Posts: 961

A Rag Man wrote:

Q:Why is this somewhat convoluted system a better means to an end than just have a plot tree system? A:It's subtler and more replayable.

A lot of people seem to assume this. There is no reason why a tree system can't be extremely subtle and nuanced and incorporate many different levels of decision-making, from small actions like bowing out of respect to big choices like whether to kill or follow an NPC. This is why I dislike Way of the Samurai; it has too much in common with KOTOR in that the NARRATIVE FREEDOM is too blatant and explicit.

I still don't see how the kind of self-managing system this thread is about can function practically while coming up with significant drama. It seems contradictory, since significance has to be written by a person.

Edit: Wait, I have to look at the new flowchart and recent posts.

A Rag Man · Posts: 22

internisus wrote:

I still don't see how the kind of self-managing system this thread is about can function practically while coming up with significant drama. It seems contradictory, since significance has to be written by a person.

That's what makes this interesting to me: maybe it can't be done, or maybe it's just something that most programmers would avoid. But conceptualizing it is a good abstract mental exercise, and it's fun to plan stuff like this. It's the kind of concept that a gamer can understand, think about, and hypothesize in a way that a non-gamer couldn't.

Also, if anybody were to try this out you can't deny that you'd be intrigued. Even if it spiralled out of control: what would that be like? I always thought that Dr. Mario was more fun when you rubbed it across the carpet, and played it with glitches. It was like Cubist Dr. Mario.